


A House That Doesn't Change

by draculard



Category: Phantom Thread (2017)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Implied/Referenced Incest, Mama Woodcock's Death, Nothing more explicit than the movie though, Pre-Movie, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 18:30:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,055
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20247367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: The neighbor women come to clean Mother's body for the wake.Reynolds holds the washbasin.





	A House That Doesn't Change

The house doesn’t change after Mother dies. The neighbor women come to clean her body for the wake, and Cyril and Reynolds are there to assist. Reynolds heats the washbasin; Cyril dips their softest towel into it and then lays it over Mother’s body, caressing her hardened arms and legs through the material. 

Foxglove petals float in the water; Cyril’s choice, though Reynolds thinks it was his. He appreciates the scent and color, the bell-shaped blossoms, the poetry of its name; Cyril appreciates its toxicity. She hopes, perhaps inappropriately, that the petals in the water will leave a rash on Mother’s dead skin  — but once Mother has been cleaned, the only trace of foxglove is the subtle fragrance hanging over her, masking the smell of death.

Shrouded, her body lies in a low bed across the room from theirs, waiting for the day when all their family and friends will gather in their small home to drink and clasp Mother’s hand and cry. When Cyril goes to sleep, she can feel Reynolds’s warmth beside her, and she knows without looking that his eyes are open and he’s staring right at Mother. 

Cyril and Reynolds have shared a bed since childhood, most commonly with Cyril’s arm thrown over Reynolds and the blankets grasped tightly in Reynolds’s little hands; it’s a small and sturdy bed, built by their grandfather from a mighty oak, the trunk of which still stands in their backyard. It’s topped with a mattress filled with hay. 

Mother sewed the quilt herself, before she was married. When Reynolds was seven, he added a patch of his own. When Cyril was eight, she added hers. They did it together, their little hands working side by side, brows furrowed in concentration. One of them remembered Mother’s instructions and demonstrations better than the other, but they never had an issue with crowding each other. Their knuckles never touched.

Reynolds is one year younger than her and one inch shorter. Strangers see their wide brown eyes and narrow faces and mistake them for twins. Mother uses the same scraps of gingham to make clothes for the both of them and says it’s out of frugality, not because she needs them to match; she calls them by the wrong names.

They bathe together, the aluminum tub just big enough to fit them both, their knees touching, the hands knocking as they fight over the soap. 

Their haircuts are the same: too short for Cyril, too long for Reynolds.

“You’ve always loved each other so,” says Mother before she dies. “Never fought, always loved the same things.”

They’ve heard this all before.

“Your father and I told Cyril the rules,” says Mother, “and Cyril followed them. And when Reynolds was old enough to crawl, she followed him everywhere and ensured he followed them, too.”

They’ve heard this, too.

“When Reynolds was born,” says Mother, “he was born at six thirty-five in the morning, just as Cyril was born at six thirty-five at night. He was small  — five pounds, but with long legs and fingers  — just as Cyril was. The same weight down to the ounce.”

They know.

“When he was born,” says Mother, “Cyril only knew a few words, but she was big enough to hold him. She looked down at him and she smiled so beautifully, and do you know what she said?”

They do, of course. Impossibly, they both remember, and in the night when Mother is dead and Reynolds is staring at her body, Cyril slings her arm over his waist and finds his hand and squeezes it, and notices that his hand was waiting for hers, open and needy, his fingers crushing hers.

When Reynolds was born, Cyril said,  _ Mine. _

* * *

When Father calls Mother that, it’s an insult, a blatant show of disrespect, derision. In Reynolds’s mouth, it feels like honey.

_ My old so-and-so,  _ he says. 

He’s three years old the first time he says, too young to understand what it means, too young to pick up on tone. Cyril, four, understands better, but at the same time believes that when Mother says “shut up” to Father, she’s just joking. She thinks it’s a fine thing to say to her Father right up until she tries it, earning herself a crack across the face.

They both grow out of it, eventually. They grow to understand nuance better than most, but they never stop using that phrase. 

* * *

He touches the small of her back when he thinks she’s sleeping, and Cyril knows it’s a gesture of affection the same way she knows his real motivation is to measure her waist. He’s making her a dress; he thinks she doesn’t know. 

It’s difficult to hide anything in this house. If she asked him, she’s certain he’d tell her. He’d say,  _ Yes, I was taking your measurements, _ and he’d show her his project without so much as a twitch to indicate it was meant to be a secret. What he wouldn’t cop to, she suspects, is the inherent affection of placing his hand on Cyril’s back. That part, he would almost certainly deny.

The next day, when Cyril opens the window, she smells November air and burning leaves; she smells smoke from her own woodstove. Thick tendrils of it seem to curl into the wool of Reynolds’s sweater, clinging to him no matter where he goes, as though he’s burning. He could take off his shirt and work on her dress nude, and she suspects she’d still see smoke wrapped ‘round his arms and chest as closely as any of his tailor-fit finery.

And he  _ is _ warm, she notices, when she leans against his chest. She turns her cheek and he tucks his chin against the top of her head; she can feel his collarbone through his sweater, brushing against her nose. 

He smells of foxglove. 

Her eyes flicker to the bed across the room; its mattress has been gone for years now  — she burned it alone in the backyard when Mother was buried, with no help, using pine wood which put up enormous billows of smoke, sap bubbling and popping in the heat  — and now it is piled high in yards of extra fabric. 

She wonders if he’s been sleeping in it without her knowing somehow. 

She wonders if the old oak frame still smells like foxglove, too. 


End file.
